Immigration and Voting Behaviour

Research question/goal:

Against the background of the constant discussion about the need for (qualified) foreign labour, migration as a politically relevant topic gained more and more importance over the last few years in Germany. Considering the new field of tension between economic needs and democratic legitimacy as well as the increasingly volatile citizens’ electoral behaviour, the project should make an innovative and substantial contribution to the research of attitudes of natives to immigrants including background information and possible consequences. In Europe research and respective surveys to this topic were progressively established in the last decades. However, respondents were asked to their perception and attitudes rather direct and in plain language. Recent studies from the US use additionally innovative measures in order to take still relevant issues into account, like skin colour, religion and migration. The different aspects of the complex of themes concerning stereotypes, prejudices and political correctness can be dealt with the help of visual techniques (morphing), list experiments and implicit attitude tests (IAT). This means that in contrast to the existing research in Germany, the project is capable of going beyond the instruments of classic surveys and ting in with the current international state of the art. At the same time, the study’s design will allow to compare directly the strengths and weaknesses of the different innovative techniques. However this methodologically accentuated contribution is not limited to migration, but applicable to all socially sensitive topics.

Current stage:

After completing field work the survey waves were integrated into one cleared and user-friendly dataset. Presentations were held on several international conferences to be prepared for publication. Moreover the cooperation in an international network of researchers with similar projects in different countries was intensified.

Fact sheet

Funding:

Ministry of Science, Research and Arts Baden-Württemberg

Duration:

2011 to 2015

Status:

ongoing

Data Sources:

Survey data

Geographic Space:

Germany

Publications

Conference Presentations

Fietkau, Sebastian, Kasper Hansen and Thorsten Faas (2014): How Perception of Immigrants Trigger Feelings of Economic and Cultural Threats: Experiment with Visualizing Techniques Across Danes and Germans. [72nd Annual Conference of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, April 02nd to April 06th, 2014]more

Faas, Thorsten, and Sebastian Fietkau (2014): List Experiments in the Study of Voting Behavior. [4th Annual General Conference of the European Political Science Association, Edinburgh, June 20th to June 21st, 2014]more

Fietkau, Sebastian, and Constanza Sanhueza Petrarca (2014): From Self-Interest to Identity: Cross-Country and European-Wide Attitudes towards Migrants in Times of Crisis. [4th Annual General Conference of the European Political Science Association, Edinburgh, June 19th to June 21st, 2014]more

Fietkau, Sebastian, and Thorsten Faas (2013): Visual Techniques In Measuring Attitudes Towards Migrants. [3rd General Conference of the European Political Science Association (EPSA), Barcelona, June 20th to June 22nd, 2013]more